Blu-ray Sales: True Grit is a Smooth Operator on High Definition

June 25th, 2011

While True Grit opening in first place on the Blu-ray sales chart this week was no surprise, its dominance was. During its first week of release it sold 737,000 units and generated $13.41 million in sales, which is close to half the total Blu-ray market. Compared to DVD, Blu-rays represented 42% of total units and 46% of revenue. Normally Westerns tend to skew a little older when it comes to age demographics, so I was expecting a slightly weaker than average Blu-ray ratio, closer to 30% than 40%.
Just Go With It opened in second place with 188,000 units / $4.17 million. Its Blu-ray ratio of 28% is more in line with expectations, given its genre. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights opened in third place with 92,000 units / $1.9 3 million. This is an excellent opening for a direct-to-DVD release and Blu-ray represented 48% of total units sold and 57% of revenue. While there is no denying this is a great result, this is also the perfect release for Blu-ray with a dedicated Fanboy following who would be willing to spend extra, but not a huge amount of recognition in the general populace. Sanctum failed to make an impact on DVD, but earned fourth place on Blu-ray with 61,000 units / $1.46 million. Its opening Blu-ray ratio of 41% is good, especially for a decidedly second-tier release. The Back to the FutureBox Set was deeply discounted this week and that helped it reach fifth place with just under 40,000 units.

The next best new release was Breaking Bad: Season Three, which landed in ninth place with 28,000 units. Its Blu-ray ratio of 20% is good for a TV on Blu-ray release, which is a genre that's still hasn't exactly caught on as well as others. The final new releases to chart was The Company Men, which placed 22nd with 15,000 units / $297,000 for the week, giving it a Blu-ray ratio of just 16%. This is not a good result, even for the genre.

With True Grit beating expectations, the overall Blu-ray sales market was surprisingly robust, selling more than 1.5 million units while generating $31 million in sales. Unit sales were up 82% from last weekend and 122% from last year. The gains in revenue were not quite as pronounced, but still rose 63% from last week and 97% from last year. Compared to the overall DVD market, Blu-rays represented 32% of the total units sold and 35% of total revenue, which is again strong growth. Granted last year's new releases were not particularly strong and the DVD sales chart was led by Alice in Wonderland for the second week in a row, so year-over-year growth is arguably a little misleadingly optimistic. But this success still bodes well going forward.